Patna, Nov 5 (IANS) After Chief Minister Nitish Kumar, his deputy Sushil Kumar Modi is facing heat on the state government’s much-publicised land reforms and Thursday had to clarify that credit cards for farmers would not mean ownership of land for sharecroppers.
A day after an open revolt on the issue in his own Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and calls for his removal, Modi said the government is distributing the Kisan Credit Cards under the guidelines laid down by the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) and NABARD and in no case would the distribution of cards be tantamount to ownership of land.

He said that the holder of the Kisan Credit Card is entitled to a Rs.50,000 loan from the banks and ownership is neither a precondition nor a requirement as there is no need for collateral security for the loan.

Early this week, Modi reportedly said that government would issue Kisan Credit Card to the sharecroppers too.

Soon after his remarks, some of the BJP legislators and senior leaders including former MPs criticised him, terming his statement advocating Kisan Credit Cards for sharecroppers as “irresponsible” and one that would “harm the party’s interests”.

Last month, Nitish Kumar assured the upper castes that their lands were safe and his government has no plans to enact a new law to protect sharecroppers. Kumar allegedly buckled under the pressure from the strong farmer lobby of upper castes and powerful backward castes including his own.

Jalaluddin Ansari, convenor of the Left Coordination Committee (LCC), alleged big landholders and land mafia opposed the land reforms proposed by the D. Bandopadhayay Commission report, and had forced Nitish Kumar not to implement the commissions’s recommendations.

“Nitish Kumar put off implementation of land reforms to placate the land mafia with an eye to next year’s state polls,” he alleged.

Ansari said Nitish Kumar, Rashtriya Janata Dal chief Lalu Prasad and Lok Janshakti Party chief Ram Vilas Paswan were equally to blame for non-implementation of land reforms. “All three have misled and ignored the landless people,” he said.

In Bihar, members of the upper castes, particularly the powerful Bhumihar and Rajputs, own large tracts of land in rural areas till date despite the rise of backward castes since 1990.

In July, the Bandopadhayay Commission on land reforms suggested the state government bring in a new act to protect sharecroppers, besides a cap on the land ceiling and computerising land records.

Soon after the commission report, a powerful lobby mostly comprising of upper castes and some backward castes, opposed the move to give land rights to sharecroppers.

It is said that upper caste people voted against Nitish Kumar in the by-elections last month to teach him a lesson on the issue. The ruling alliance (JD-U and BJP) got just 5 seats, in comparison to the opposition RJD-LJP alliance bagging 9 seats. The Congress won 2 and the BSP and an independent one each.

Nearly 40 percent of Bihar’s 83 million people live below the poverty line, the highest in India, according to a World Bank report.